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Tiling

Tiling is the process of rendering pattern cells to a portion of a page. When Quartz renders a pattern to a device, Quartz may need to adjust the pattern to fit the device space. That is, the pattern cell as defined in user space might not fit perfectly when rendered to the device because of differences between user space units and device pixels.

Quartz has three tiling options it can use to adjust patterns when necessary. Quartz can preserve:

• The pattern, at the expense of adjusting the spacing between pattern cells slightly, but by no more than one device pixel. This is referred to as no distortion.

• Spacing between cells, at the expense of distorting the pattern cell slightly, but by no more than one device pixel. This is referred to as constant spacing with minimal distortion.

• Spacing between cells (as for the minimal distortion option) at the expense of distorting the pattern cell as much as needed to get fast tiling. This is referred to as constant spacing.

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